A Sunday perspective. Are Sundays about reflecting on the past week or looking forward to the coming week?
I am never sure. During the past week we caught up with some former colleagues over a cup of coffee. We had the most delicious conversations about third party former colleagues, that we had all worked with at differing times or hospitals.
Two military men cropped up. The resulting conversation is unlikely ever to be forgotten.
” Oh X, he was always so lovely, I can’t believe you didn’t realise he was gay”
” Y, nice chap, quite a stickler, maybe homophobic”
” Did you know he became a Wizard”
Conversations like this are the bricks and mortar of good friendships. The laughter in that moment was golden.
Here is another golden Sunday perspective. A super low tide and a long walk to the ferry.
Monday fakery, this picture did not make it into the autumn leaf blog yesterday. My Google Pixel phone generated it from one of my photos in the ‘stylised’ setting in picture editing. Stylised uses my favourite settings and gives me a picture I might create for myself. Mostly the image is an epic fail, in my opinion, but sometimes the result is gloriously accurate, as it has been for this picture.
If I suffered from ‘Monday Morning Malaise’ this is a picture that could encourage me to ‘ get a wiggle on’.
My long term career was a seven day a week job so Mondays were not quite as significant to me, but commuting into work in London using public transport it was easy to feel that ‘Monday’ feeling emanating, if not dripping from my fellow commuters. And from the 9-5ers who arrived at 9 on a Monday and worked alongside those of us who worked shifts and On-Call rotas. I was also spared the ‘Sunday Night Dread’. Although the ‘on-call’ dread was very real any day of the week.
Now, I live a self-directed week; my Monday mornings are a little more significant than they have ever been. Monday morning is like unpacking an Amazon parcel. I don’t quite remember what is planned this week. (I can never remember what I ordered) My first job is to check my diary and I am good to go. This picture rather joyfully sums up the optimism of most of my Mondays. I realise I am lucky.
Writing a daily blog is a constant evolving habit. Some days I know exactly where the blog is going, other days I respond to a question from my blog hosts. Some days I wait for a nugget of inspiration as the day unfolds. The only rules are that I write something each day and give some thought to my subject matter.
Not particularly blog related but I regularly like to look at my photo archive held on my phone or in the ‘Cloud’ and see what was uploaded on previous 24th Octobers. Or any other date for that matter.
Doing so proves to me that within lifes repetitive cycles there are always significant moments.
The colourful land crab at the top of the blog was actually photographed on the 20th October 2015 in Sai Kung, Hong Kong but on the 24th October I cropped and edited the photograph to use as my screensaver on my phone on the 24th October.
Wembury
Late afternoon in Wembury 2012. 24th October. Wembury is somewhere I take the blog often. On this particular day I was pondering the fairly recent death of my fathers friend who despite coming from Essex was very familiar with this coastline. When I was a child my parents friends were just part of my childish outer circle but knowing my parents friends as an adult was a lovely experience and it is sad when those connections are lost.
Brick wall, City of London 2018
This was a brick wall in an underground car park in the City of London between Smithfield Meat Market and St Bartholomews Hospital. I only ever parked there once despite working at Barts, but was thrilled to find this really old wall and an advert for a long lost coaching inn nearby.
The underground car park had originally been an underground railway station in the 1800’s for the meat market at Smithfield. It was also the location of the MI 5 headquarters in the James Bond film, Skyfall.
Which moves me on, pondering to another wall on 24th October 2017.
I had a new app on my phone that meant I could ‘hang’ any of my pictures on any wall I chose. Giddy times. Finally 24th October 2021.
Cafe Au Lait
My peak moment at Dahlia growing, the last dahlia of our last dahlia season at the actual Old Mortuary. The Dahlias were lovingly moved to our new city home. The Dahlias were not impressed with city living and checked out. Who knew they could be so fastidious.
24th October a routine kind of day but stuff still happens.
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
I’ve pondered sudden windfalls of large amounts of money for most of my adult life. I have also pondered just how long the words One million would still have the cachet of seeming like unimaginable wealth. I realise all these things are relative.
Lets chip away at the One Million Dollars.
£ 765,155 pounds would not even buy me my first flat in South London which had 3 bedrooms.
A suburb where people with ‘normal’ jobs owned or rented normal sized flats in unremarkable streets.
Going back further to when I was first properly aware of the true value of money and how I had to work to earn it.
Right now if I had a windfall of £765, 155 the last thing I would be doing is giving it away, away. My family could be more comfortable and I could make a difference to small, local organisations and charities by making bigger donations than I do now.
How much longer can the word Million continue to pretend that it represents unimaginable wealth?
In theory, rather empty, but my head has the most delightful, personal Juke Box, playing in my subconscious, on demand. Sometimes in the form of earworms, when I least expect it.
Yesterday, I managed to tackle all admin work while Hugo enjoyed a longer walk without him needing pain relief. It was a productive day with a refreshing sea breeze as I balanced work and caring for Hugo. This was my working-from-home location during one of his rest periods.
I suspect Hugo is loving the attention of the last week since he hurt his back. My route yesterday around the harbours of Plymouth is one of his favourites because there are many cafes that he approves of. Yesterday we chose a cafe themed towards bikers with engines.
Predictably their dog biscuit offering is fairly butch. Far too challenging for fluffs with small mouths, but the industrial concrete floor soon turned a bulldog style biscuit into something a poodle could nibble at.
The slower pace of this week’s walks gave me a moment of contradiction yesterday. Despite walking past and walking into this old building on the edge of Sutton Harbour, many times, I had never read the blue plaque.
The Custom House was built in 1586 or round about. The time when Plymouth was at its zenith as a Pirate port.
Usually when I see old doors I like to romanticise about the people who have passed through them but certainly I cannot imagine too many pirates saying,
” Have you seen the new Customs House, we must pop in there on our way to the bars and whore houses, when we dock”
” I just cannot enjoy myself and really let go until my Import Tax is up to date”
That must have been quite the job to have in Elizabethan Plymouth. Everyone strolling right past pretending they haven’t seen your open door and welcoming toothless smile.
No playing Wordle in a quiet moment.
Just lots of quiet moments.
It is somewhat ironic that these two information boards are just a few paces from the old custom house.
The things I get to ponder on restorative, slow, dog walk days.
My rain soaked blog of yesterday was written on St Swithuns Day. Traditionally if it rains or is sunny on his name day then rain or sun will be with us for 40 days. Thankfully this morning is dull with no rain. Which put St Swithun on the spot somewhat. I thought I would check his credentials. An Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester born in about 800. A quick google suggests that his actual career has been eclipsed by folklore and his miracle. Folklore is the 40 days of rain or sun theory. His miracle, apparently, was to restore to perfection some eggs broken by builders on a bridge.
Unlikely, I think. But if those two things have eclipsed his career it suggests he may not have been a particularly effective Bishop in the 800’s. Sometimes these Saints are best left unresearched.
At home or abroad I waste the most time pondering. Pondering looks unproductive to the outside observer but the time is never truly wasted. Pondering also occurs when I look gainfully employed. Pondering often gets me out of trouble because pondering sometimes causes a change of direction with human interactions and different endeavours. Mulling things over or reflecting are just other words for pondering.
Holiday pondering is just the same as home pondering but in a better climate. Today I pondered Donkey Milk. Unknown to me it has been a beauty and health product from the beginning of time. Donkey milk is the closest thing to human milk . Which puts a whole different view of the Christian Nativity. When I was young I wondered/ pondered why a nine months pregnant woman would want to ride a donkey. When a mule/pony/horse would have been more comfy for her blessed lady garden and or pregnancy created piles.
But here I am the daft one. Joseph on a last minute shop before they set off was sent for some formula, just in case. Breast milk substitute and transport all in one cute package.
I’ve just gone for a face cream. Two choices 24 hour, or wrinkle.
The wrinkles arrived a while ago so that seemed like a lost cause but 24 hour cream regularly applied could give me eternal life should I choose. Warding off the grim reaper one day at a time.
A day of transforming a yard from off-white to white turned out to be both extraordinarily colourful and a self-limiting occupation. The colour change can be seen just by the O of off-white. The early morning dog walk set the colour bar high when I noticed that the luminous cows had moved.
To make way for a very fancy shoe, advertising a Theatre show.
Nature also created wild flower paths between cows and shoe
Dog-walk over it was time to flip off the paint pot lid. With just a moment to tweak Pure Brilliant White into something a little more lively, with fingers still clean enough to touch my phone.
Radio at the ready and I was off.
6 hours later, I had not reached the end of the job but the end of the pot of paint was a most welcome sight.
So much for providing myself with many different audio treats, mucky fingers meant I was stuck with Radio 4 for the day. My ears and mind were taken to places I might not necessarily have chosen. Other people pondering the concept of unconditional love. Very thought provoking. I had some thoughts to add, but radio isn’t like that unless the show offers a phone-in and I would not have had clean enough hands for that sort of shenanigans. Rolling news reports. And some poetry, who could possibly have predicted gentle tears while painting.
I love a complicated image, first thing in the morning. Coffee and a complicated image, which is what this was, is even better.
On reflection, I fear I may have been a bit harsh with May. All my moaning on, about rain and dull days. I blame my genes. I was reading about the wettest and dryest cities in England yesterday. If you were to draw a triangle with each corner being a top 3 driest city. Cambridge, London, Chelmsford. All in the East of England. 75% of my gene pool comes from that geographical area, making me wet-intolerant. The other 25% comes from Wales and Norway. If I was a plant nobody would set my roots in the 3rd wettest city in England , Plymouth, and expect me to thrive. But that is exactly what I have done to myself. So if I am a little droopy in the long, wet, autumn/winter/spring months I have only myself to blame.
On a positive note the roses of Plymouth are just fabulous this year. Our local municipal park has an informal memorial rose garden and after a few days of proper good weather the fragrance and colours are vivid in the late afternoon. I am hoping for a similar transition myself.
I may even do a whole blog about roses, particularly those with their roots in cremated remains.
I am not usually a fan of formal rose gardens but the randomness and slightly scruffy haphazardness of this particular one intrigues me enough to go back.
Somewhere in a cupboard I have a cremated cat called Jasper,I wonder if he fancies going in a pot with rose roots , he might make a wonderful show.
P.s My parents cremated remains are buried in a dry old spot in the East of England, their choice.
Not for them the gaudy,giddiness of a mish-mash of blowsy multicoloured roses. They have a quiet country churchyard and were dug up by moles. I think I prefer gaudy giddiness as a memorial.
theoldmortuary.design 